Ordinary
by tider58
Summary: Dawn fears normal. Now she knows why.
1. Chapter 1

The funny thing is—and that's funny as in horrifying—that the house feels perfectly normal when Dawn steps cautiously through the front door. Why is she being cautious, one might ask, if all seems absolutely A-okay? She doesn't bother to ponder that, and the why ceases to matter very soon.

"Buffy?" she calls, and almost jumps at the sound of her own voice, piercing as it slices into the not-at-all-eerie silence. She even laughs a little, shaking her head in self-disdain. "Spaz," she chides. But she doesn't call out again.

The kitchen is empty, and fairly tidy for once because Buffy did the breakfast dishes that morning instead of waiting for Dawn to get home from school and nagging and threatening until she grudgingly complied. Dawn grabs a Coke from the fridge and opens it, the crack-hiss of the pressurized can sounding louder than it probably should. She raises it to her lips, pauses, then sets it down on the counter without taking a sip. Cocks her head to the side to test the stillness. It's a vampire thing, a kind of preternatural awareness of your surroundings, a dissection of the qualities and layers of scent and feeling and sound too slight to detect with your regular senses. It's something Spike tried to teach her That Summer. Thought it would serve her well during the few and far-between moments when he wasn't actually glued to her side. Thought it would help keep her safe, if he helped her hone that beyond-the-self awareness.

She'd never really mastered it, much to Spike's frustration (he was many things, her vampire friend, but a patient teacher was _not_ one of them). No difference now; she can't detect anything but the steady hum of the refrigerator and the oddly fuzzy sound of carbonated-drink bubbles as her Coke settles. Ordinary.

Which in itself is weird. Ordinary is a rare visitor to the Summers House of the Paranormal, where the One Girl In All The World hangs her stakes, where mystical Keys take human form and no one knows any different, where there's blood in the freezer and weapons by every door, where bad things happen so frequently that bad is … normal. Dawn realizes she's biting her lip only when it hurts.

Where is everyone, anyway? She'd expected Tara and Willow to still be—_ahem_—reconciling—when she got home, maybe tired enough by then to finally extricate themselves from the bedroom and offer to take her out for a bite to eat. Dawn had planned to scarf down a cheeseburger (because only Doublemeat Palace fare is blacklisted; at heart she is still a lover of artery-clogging foods of all kinds) and wheedle them into telling her the juicy details … well, not _that kind_ of juicy, because they wouldn't, and while she's really curious about certain _hows_, and they are the best source of accurate information she can think of in that arena, what she really wants to know is the romantic stuff. How they found their way back to each other. How sure they both are, now, that it is forever. How Willow has really sworn off magic this time and Tara will never, ever leave again. She sighs contentedly at the thought.

So where are they? Maybe they're asleep. Isn't sex stuff supposed to make you really tired? Dawn makes a mental note to double check that with Janice, who claims to have done Everything But with Todd, and who generally gives Dawn a hard time about how clueless she can be with regard to sex, but mostly just wants to show off how clueless she herself is not. So she's a good if often less-than-accurate source for information. Buffy, on the other hand, clams up when prodded for anything more specific than what can be found on any moderately reputable Web site. And once when Dawn made the mistake of asking Spike a question, just to get a male perspective on the matter, he'd _blown up_ and demanded the name of the sodding wanker who'd been pressuring her into things that he'd rip her head off for if she ever even contemplated doing. So. That was the end of that.

She tiptoes up the stairs to avoid waking them in case they are, in fact, deep in some kind of hormone-induced post-coital nap. But the door to the bedroom is wide open.

"Willow?" she calls, just in case. Her voice comes out higher-pitched than usual. And weak. "Tara?"

_So they're not here. No one's home. It's the middle of the day and no one's home and there's absolutely nothing weird about that. I should just go back downstairs and watch TV and veg out like any normal fifteen-year-old would do on an ordinary afternoon after school._

Even as the thought forms, she's stepping into the room that was her mother's a million years ago. And part of her—not the part that screams, but something deeper—isn't even shocked to see what she sees. Horrified, yes … distraught, sick, angry, hysterical. But not shocked, because that part of her has already guessed.

As she drops to her knees next to Tara's prone, too-still form, not quite willing to touch her and hating herself for that weakness, she wonders if Spike's awareness training wasn't more successful than either of them thought.

xXxXx

**One more chapter … I think?**


	2. Chapter 2

Dawn knows something about death.

You don't grow up (or _remember_ growing up) with The Slayer as your big sister and not become somewhat acquainted with it, no matter how hard everyone tries to shield you from the worst parts. It's commonplace here, something that comes with the good-versus-evil territory that defines their lives. Win some, lose some, accept the casualties, move on. Because when you deal in Life and Death, as Buffy does by calling and as the rest of them do by association, there _is_ a casualness about it. There has to be, or they might just decide that the fight isn't worth the pain. And where would that leave a world so naively dependent on their efforts?

For most of her life death had played by their rules. It took the ones Buffy wasn't quick enough to save, or the ones she never even knew needed saving. Or the ones who messed up, made stupid decisions like walking in graveyards alone at night (and _oh_ the shit Dawn had taken from Spike on those occasions when she'd gotten caught doing the same).

But, you see, they knew better, Buffy and her band of pseudo-warriors. They knew how to _live_ in Sunnydale, and because of this inside knowledge and because they were heroes of a sort, they were untouchable. Or so Dawn had thought … until Mom. _(Mom … had an accident. Or, um … something went wrong. From the tumor…)_

Still, they would have lost her anyway, anywhere; it was a horror that, for once, no one could blame on the Hellmouth. Xander had tried and failed to follow that line of illogic. The rest of them took it for what it was: tragedy. Unavoidable, despite Buffy's self-flagellation and Dawn's childish but ingrained blame-Buffy default when something goes wrong because _she's Buffy._

Even before her knees buckle and spill her heavily to the floor next to _(not Tara, NOT Tara, it can't be her because she's the best one of us)_ the limp form of her friend, she's screaming Buffy's name. Her high-pitched, ragged shouts are edged with hysteria, and she knows it and the sound ratchets up the panic even more. She clings to it, because fear eclipses grief, and the former she knows well, can handle okay, when she has to.

But maybe … maybe there's no need for grief. Maybe she's just hurt, and what the hell is Dawn doing wasting precious time when she might still be able to _do_ something? She reaches for Tara's shoulder, presses her fingertips against the blue fabric of her sweater. Soft. Like Tara. (Soft voice, soft eyes, soft words, soft _essence_, that is Tara and that's why she has to stay with us, because everything else is too damned _hard_…)

Steeling herself, Dawn applies a little pressure, thinking that if she can just roll her the rest of the way over, maybe stop the bleeding? …that all is not lost. So she presses a little on Tara's shoulder, and there is some give but she's so cold. And Dawn's been here before, too.

_(Where'd she go?)_

A child's question without an answer. She can't stop the bleeding because there _is_ no bleeding, anymore. She's too late.

When she takes her hand away Tara's shoulder rolls to the side again, and a curtain of hair falls down over her face. Dawn gasps, a little hitch of breath that sounds like a sob, but she can't cry yet because … it can't be over.

_Gotta keep the fear. Hang on to it. It's all you got._

A breeze whispers against her skin and she glances up at the window. The broken window. She doesn't want to put the puzzle together, so she doesn't even try.

She suddenly, desperately, wants Spike. He would sweep in and take the situation in hand, fix Tara because he can fix _anything,_ call Dawn by an endless assortment of nicknames that she always pretends to find tiresome, maybe tell her she'd been bloody brave, a compliment that, considering the source, would be something to cherish for all time.

It's praise he'd bestowed once, soon after they lost Buffy. Dawn had flung herself through the door of his crypt in hysterics, having just narrowly escaped becoming a midnight snack for one of Sunnydale's Walking Dead. Without a word, he'd steered her over to his tattered comfy chair, parked her there, and stalked out into the cemetery. When he returned five minutes later, he was dusting his hands off and swearing furiously at her in almost unintelligible British.

"I had to get out of there," she'd said quietly when he seemed to be running out of steam and she was fairly certain he wasn't going to make good on any of the awe-inspiring threats he'd delivered. "They look at me like—" She'd paused, glancing up at him, relieved to see that his blue eyes had softened considerably and that his head was tilted slightly, which meant he was _listening_, the way he does. "You don't look at me the way they do."

"I don't see you the way they do."

"What does that mean?"

"They look at you and they see her. Don't do that, 's not your fault, Bit. But it's not that way with you and me, right? Never will be."

Dawn had frowned, not sure she understood what he was getting at. "Because I'll never _be_ her."

"Stop that. Not what I meant and you know better."

Ignoring him, Dawn continued. "You all got stuck with the consolation prize. Some prize, huh? She was the hero, Spike. I— I could have fixed this, prevented it, but I was too afraid up there on that tower. I waited too long. I kept hanging on hoping someone would save me instead of just doing what had to be done. Buffy is dead because I'm so weak."

He had taken Dawn by the arm, drawing her up out of the chair. Placing a finger under her chin, he forced her face up until she met his eyes. "Bollocks," he said. "Takes more than a bit of courage to keep playing with the hand you've been dealt."

When she rolled her eyes and tried to look away, he gave her a firm little shake. "Not saying this for the warm fuzzies, Bit. You listen. Bloody brave you are, sweetheart. Buffy'd be proud. _I_ am." Probably to curb the tears that had suddenly sprung up in Dawn's eyes, he went on in a louder, harsher tone, "Bloody _stupid_, too, wandering around a graveyard in Sunnyhell all alone in the middle of the night. And if _that_ happens again it's _me_ you'll need to run from to save your scrawny ass … But yeah, you got guts, Niblet."

Guts.

She doesn't feel bloody brave now, kneeling next to Tara and fighting sobs that want to wrack her body. And it's daylight. Spike won't swoop in to save the day.

She backs up to the wall, eyes glued to Tara and heart pounding sickeningly against her ribs. Drawing her knees up to her chest, she waits for someone to come home.


End file.
